The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Read online

  “This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”

  Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said:

  “I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?”

  “That’s just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it’s the biggest luck in the world that I’ve found you. My name is Lykins. I’m one of the teachers of the high school—San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it—and here I am.”

  “Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked . . . Mr. Lykins . . . here you are. And have you got it?”

  “Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I’ve brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you’ll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”

  “If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation to-night,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it—to an unaccustomed ear.

  “Oh, to-night, by all means! I haven’t got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed—I ain’t the talking kind, I’m the doing kind!”

  “Yes . . . you’ve come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?”

  “Just an hour ago.”

  “When are you intending to leave?”

  “For New York to-morrow evening—for San Francisco next morning.”

  “Just so. . . . What are you going to do to-morrow?”

  “Do! Why, I’ve got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven’t I?”

  “Yes . . . very true . . . that is correct. And then what?”

  “Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.—got to get the appointment confirmed—I reckon you’ll grant that?”

  “Yes . . . yes,” said Riley, meditatively, “you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?”

  “That’s it—that’s the way I map it out!”

  Riley considered a while, and then said:

  “You couldn’t stay . . . a day . . . well, say two days longer?”

  “Bless your soul, no! It’s not my style. I ain’t a man to go fooling around—I’m a man that does things, I tell you.”

  The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:

  “Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby’s, once? . . . But I see you haven’t.”

  He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest:

  “I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson’s time. Gadsby’s was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o’clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby’s, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, ‘Never mind,’ and jumped out and told the coachman to wait—said he hadn’t time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.

  “Well, about eleven o’clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up—said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand—January, 1834—the 3d of January—Wednesday.

  “Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one—said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn’t care for style.

  “On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses—said he’d often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving—and there wasn’t so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough.

  “On the 13th of December he sold another horse—said two warn’t necessary to drag that old light vehicle with—in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.

  “On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy—said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.

  “On the 1st of August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky—said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky—didn’t believe they’d ever heard of a sulky in their lives.

  “Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman—said he didn’t need a coachman for a sulky—wouldn’t be room enough for two in it anyway—and, besides, it wasn’t every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that—been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn’t like to throw him away.

  “Eighteen months later—that is to say, on the 15th of February, 1837—he sold the sulky and bought a saddle—said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog’d if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself.

  “On the 9th of April he sold the saddle—said he wasn’t going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe—always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway.

  “On the 24th of April he sold his horse—said ‘I’m just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty—it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain’t anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man—and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it’s collected. So to-morrow I’ll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby’s.’

  “On the 22d of June he sold his dog—said ‘Dern a dog, anyway, where you’re just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills—perfect nuisance—chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords—man can’t get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature—and I’d a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it’s a mighty sight safer; a dog’s mighty uncertain in a financial way—always noticed it—well, good-by boys—last call—I’m off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.’”

  There was a pause and a silence—except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently:

  “Well?”

  Riley said:

  “Well—that was thirty years ago.”

  “Very well, very well—what of it?”

  “I’m great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago—he’s off for Tennessee early to-morrow morning—as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more.”

  Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:

&nbs
p; “Is that all?”

  “That is all.”

  “Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what’s it all for?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular.”

  “Well, where’s the point of it?”

  “Oh, there isn’t any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I’d advice you to ‘put up at Gadsby’s’ for a spell, and take it easy. Good-by. God bless you!”

  So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished schoolteacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.

  He never got that post-office.

  From A TRAMP ABROAD, 1880

  MRS. MCWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING

  WELL, SIR—continued Mr. McWilliams, for this was not the beginning of his talk—the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in a man. It is a particularly distressing infirmity, for the reason that it takes the sand out of a person to an extent which no other fear can, and it can’t be reasoned with, and neither can it be shamed out of a person. A woman who could face the very devil himself—or a mouse—loses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. Her fright is something pitiful to see.

  Well, as I was telling you, I woke up, with that smothered and unlocatable cry of “Mortimer! Mortimer!” wailing in my ears; and as soon as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and then said:

  “Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?”

  “Shut up in the boot-closet. You ought to be ashamed to lie there and sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.”

  “Why, how can one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonable; a man can’t be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline.”

  “You never try, Mortimer—you know very well you never try.”

  I caught the sound of muffled sobs.

  That sound smote dead the sharp speech that was on my lips, and I changed it to—

  “I’m sorry, dear—I’m truly sorry. I never meant to act so. Come back and—”

  “MORTIMER!”

  “Heavens! what is the matter, my love?”

  “Do you mean to say you are in that bed yet?”

  “Why, of course.”

  “Come out of it instantly. I should think you would take some little care of your life, for my sake and the children’s, if you will not for your own.”

  “But, my love—”

  “Don’t talk to me, Mortimer. You know there is no place so dangerous as a bed in such a thunder-storm as this—all the books say that; yet there you would lie, and deliberately throw away your life—for goodness knows what, unless for the sake of arguing, and arguing, and—”

  “But, confound it, Evangeline, I’m not in the bed now. I’m—”

  [Sentence interrupted by a sudden glare of lightning, followed by a terrified little scream from Mrs. McWilliams and a tremendous blast of thunder.]

  “There! You see the result. Oh, Mortimer, how can you be so profligate as to swear at such a time as this?”

  “I didn’t swear. And that wasn’t a result of it, anyway. It would have come, just the same, if I hadn’t said a word; and you know very well, Evangeline—at least, you ought to know—that when the atmosphere is charged with electricity—”

  “Oh, yes; now argue it, and argue it, and argue it!—I don’t see how you can act so, when you know there is not a lightning-rod on the place, and your poor wife and children are absolutely at the mercy of Providence. What are you doing?—lighting a match at such a time as this! Are you stark mad?”

  “Hang it, woman, where’s the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of an infidel, and—”

  “Put it out! put it out instantly! Are you determined to sacrifice us all? You know there is nothing attracts lightning like a light. [Fzt!—crash! boom—boloom-boom-boom!] Oh, just hear it! Now you see what you’ve done!”

  “No, I don’t see what I’ve done. A match may attract lightning, for all I know, but it don’t cause lightning—I’ll go odds on that. And it didn’t attract it worth a cent this time; for if that shot was leveled at my match, it was blessed poor marksmanship—about an average of none out of a possible million, I should say. Why, at Dollymount such marksmanship as that—”

  “For shame, Mortimer! Here we are standing right in the very presence of death, and yet in so solemn a moment you are capable of using such language as that. If you have no desire to—Mortimer!”

  “Well?”

  “Did you say your prayers to-night?”

  “I—I—meant to, but I got to trying to cipher out how much twelve times thirteen is, and—”

  [Fzt!—boom-berroom-boom! bumble-umble bang-SMASH!]

  “Oh, we are lost, beyond all help! How could you neglect such a thing at such a time as this?”

  “But it wasn’t ‘such a time as this.’ There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. How could I know there was going to be all this rumpus and pow-wow about a little slip like that? And I don’t think it’s just fair for you to make so much out of it, anyway, seeing it happens so seldom; I haven’t missed before since I brought on that earthquake, four years ago.”

  “MORTIMER! How you talk! Have you forgotten the yellow-fever?”

  “My dear, you are always throwing up the yellow-fever to me, and I think it is perfectly unreasonable. You can’t even send a telegraphic message as far as Memphis without relays, so how is a little devotional slip of mine going to carry so far? I’ll stand the earthquake, because it was in the neighborhood; but I’ll be hanged if I’m going to be responsible for every blamed—”

  [Fzt!—BOOM beroom-boom! boom.—BANG!]

  “Oh, dear, dear, dear! I know it struck something, Mortimer. We never shall see the light of another day; and if it will do you any good to remember, when we are gone, that your dreadful language—Mortimer!”

  “WELL! What now?”

  “Your voice sounds as if— Mortimer, are you actually standing in front of that open fireplace?”

  “That is the very crime I am committing.”

  “Get away from it this moment! You do seem determined to bring destruction on us all. Don’t you know that there is no better conductor for lightning than an open chimney? Now where have you got to?”

  “I’m here by the window.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake! have you lost your mind? Clear out from there, this moment! The very children in arms know it is fatal to stand near a window in a thunder-storm. Dear, dear, I know I shall never see the light of another day! Mortimer!”

  “Yes.”

  “What is that rustling?”

  “It’s me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to find the upper end of my pantaloons.”

  “Quick! throw those things away! I do believe you would deliberately put on those clothes at such a time as this; yet you know perfectly well that all authorities agree that woolen stuffs attract lightning. Oh, dear, dear, it isn’t sufficient that one’s life must be in peril from natural causes, but you must do everything you can possibly think of to augment the danger. Oh, don’t sing! What can you be thinking of?”

  “Now where’s the harm in it?”

  “Mortimer, if I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times, that singing causes vibrations in the atmosphere which interrupt the flow of the electric fluid, and— What on earth are you opening that door for?”

  “Goodness gracious, woman, is there any harm in that?”

  “Harm? There’s death in it. Anybody that has given this subject any attention knows that to create a draught is to invite the lightning. You haven’t half shut it; shut it tight—and do hurry, or we are all destroyed. Oh, it is an awful thing to be
shut up with a lunatic at such a time as this. Mortimer, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Just turning on the water. This room is smothering hot and close. I want to bathe my face and hands.”

  “You have certainly parted with the remnant of your mind! Where lightning strikes any other substance once, it strikes water fifty times. Do turn it off. Oh, dear, I am sure that nothing in this world can save us. It does seem to me that—Mortimer, what was that?”

  “It was a da—it was a picture. Knocked it down.”

  “Then you are close to the wall! I never heard of such imprudence! Don’t you know that there’s no better conductor for lightning than a wall? Come away from there! And you came as near as anything to swearing, too. Oh, how can you be so desperately wicked, and your family in such peril? Mortimer, did you order a feather bed, as I asked you to do?”

  “No. Forgot it.”

  “Forgot it! It may cost you your life. If you had a feather bed now, and could spread it in the middle of the room and lie on it, you would be perfectly safe. Come in here—come quick, before you have a chance to commit any more frantic indiscretions.”

  I tried, but the little closet would not hold us both with the door shut, unless we could be content to smother. I gasped awhile, then forced my way out. My wife called out:

  “Mortimer, something must be done for your preservation. Give me that German book that is on the end of the mantelpiece, and a candle; but don’t light it; give me a match; I will light it in here. That book has some directions in it.”

  I got the book—at cost of a vase and some other brittle things; and the madam shut herself up with her candle. I had a moment’s peace; then she called out:

  “Mortimer, what was that?”

  “Nothing but the cat.”

  “The cat! Oh, destruction! Catch her, and shut her up in the washstand. Do be quick, love; cats are full of electricity. I just know my hair will turn white with this night’s awful perils.”